Sparking creativity in teams: An executive’s guide - McKinsey Quarterly - Strategy - Strategy in Practice. Although creativity is often considered a trait of the privileged few, any individual or team can become more creative—better able to generate the breakthroughs that stimulate growth and performance. In fact, our experience with hundreds of corporate teams, ranging from experienced C-level executives to entry-level customer service reps, suggests that companies can use relatively simple techniques to boost the creative output of employees at any level.
The key is to focus on perception, which leading neuroscientists, such as Emory University’s Gregory Berns, find is intrinsically linked to creativity in the human brain. To perceive things differently, Berns maintains, we must bombard our brains with things it has never encountered. This kind of novelty is vital because the brain has evolved for efficiency and routinely takes perceptual shortcuts to save energy; perceiving information in the usual way requires little of it. Immerse yourself Overcome orthodoxies What business are we in? Taking the bias out of meetings - McKinsey Quarterly - Strategy - Strategic Thinking. Five suggestions for creative strategists. From the Musée Picasso in Paris, inspiration for an ad campaign I’m teaching this week at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. From what I can gather so far, in conversations with Professor Deb Morrison and instructor Dave Koranda, the program is more progressive than most.
Deb plays the role of creative director for the program as well as a teacher, mentor and force of inspiration. Dave is busy inventing new classes that strive to help students learn the importance of widening their interests in order to become strategic problem solvers. Later this morning I lecture to a class titled Curiosity for Strategists. From Dave Koranda’s syllabus: The purpose of the class is to explore strategic thinking in advertising from perspectives that are a little broader than usually considered. It’s a worthy goal given the changing role and influence of modern digital strategists and of the need for traditional creative people to welcome their inputs and inspiration. Ikea’s Maze-Like Layout. Alan Penn, professor of architecture at University College London, UK, has estimated that 60% of purchases from Ikea are impulse buys, i.e. items shoppers didn’t plan on getting before they entered but were enticed into purchasing.
In a lecture , he talks of how the designers of the store deliberately try to confuse customers and encourage them to buy things that weren’t on their shopping list. The layout distracts shoppers, taking them on the longest route past well-placed bargains. Penn says: I have little doubt that the design to take shoppers past every room setting in the showroom, before they are taken downstairs and led past every product in the ‘marketplace’ is completely intentional.
The sinuous route that results is disorienting and confusing, and leads shoppers to put items in their trolly when they first see them because they cannot be certain that they would find them again. Who enjoys shopping in Ikea? [via Gizmodo ] Most Creative People | Most Creative People 2011.